Abstract:
Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a major microvascular complication accounting for about 30% of End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) cases. An insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism of the gene encoding angiotensin-I converting enzyme (ACE) is reported to be a candidate gene predisposing to diabetic nephropathy. Accordingly, we investigated the ACE I/D gene polymorphism in 52 Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) cases suffering from nephropathy as assessed by 24 hrs urinary protein levels. 50 age and sex matched healthy subjects served as controls. ACE I/D genotyping was carried out by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification using allele specific primers. The frequencies of ACE DD, ID and II genotypes in the diabetic nephropathy patients were 38.5% , 50% and 11.5% and in the control subjects, 22%, 38% and 40% respectively. There was an increase of 16.5% in the frequency of DD genotype in the patients compared to controls. The frequency of D allele in the patients was 63% which was found to be statistically significant (p< 0.05, Odds ratio=2.6) compared to 41% in the controls. These results indicate that Type 2 diabetic patients with D allele (those with DD & ID genotypes) have more than two fold risk of developing nephropathy. Clinical implications of ACE genotyping in planning for patient’s management have been discussed.

Abstract:
Air pollution problem is severe in the urban areas caused by both mobile as well as stationary sources. Mainly the two-stroke and diesel-run vehicles cause the severity of the problem by emitting highly contaminated exhausts. Considering severity of the problem, current study was undertaken to measure the air pollutants level in air of Chittagong city, Bangladesh. The heavy metals Zn, Pb, Mn, Cd, Cu and Co in suspended particulate matter (SPM) were determined at different locations of Chittagong city. The sampling locations were selected to reflect different influences from industrial and mobile sources in the highly populated center part of Chittagong city. Samplings were done during October and November 2008 from different areas of the metropolitan city of Chittagong city (Newmarket, Bahaddarhat, Nasirabad, General Electric Company (G.E.C.) Circle and Director’s Office of Department of Environment, Bangladesh). High volume sampler was used for the determination of SPM and the different metal concentrations were measured by atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS). The average results of particulate matters and trace metals have been compared to national and international standards. The value of SPM in air of Chittagong city is higher than that of Threshold Limit Value (TLV) recommended by World Health Organization (WHO), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), USA and Department of Environment (DoE), Bangladesh. The metal concentrations of ambient air collected at different locations in Chittagong city is exceeded the threshold limit values and as a result the air of Chittagong city is considered polluted. Therefore, it is suggested that Government of Bangladesh should take proper steps to control the air pollution of Chittagong city.

Abstract:
Background and Objectives: The prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in Saudi Arabia is unknown. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of COPD among smokers more than 40 years of age attending primary healthcare clinics in Saudi Arabia. Setting and Design: A questionnaire was used in a cross-sectional collection of demographic data and other items related to diagnosis of COPD in patients visiting primary healthcare clinics. Methods: Eligible subjects were current or ex-smokers and aged 40 years or above. Spirometry was performed according to American Thoracic Society criteria. Airflow obstruction was classified according to the 2003 update of the World Health Organization and Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease criteria. COPD was defined as a ratio less than 0.70 of post-bronchodilator-predicted forced expiratory volume in the first second to forced vital capacity (FEV1/FVC <0.70). Results: Because of incomplete data or poor performance on spirometry, of 1380 subjects eligible for the study, only 501 subjects were eligible for data analysis. Seventy-one patients had an FEV1/FVC ratio <0.70, comprising 14.2% of the study population, of which 95.8% were males. Current smokers comprised 57 (80.3%) subjects. Of the 71 subjects who fulfilled the criteria for COPD diagnosis, none were found to be in COPD stage I; 40 (56.3%) were in stage II and 31 (43.6%) were in stage III of the disease. Conclusion: Underdiagnosis of COPD in primary healthcare clinics in Saudi Arabia is common, but its extent is not different from the corresponding data available in the literature for other countries. Use of spirometry as a routine test for all patients older than 40 years of age and with a smoking history can help in early detection and proper diagnosis of COPD, which subsequently will help in implementation of preventive measures.

Abstract:
The number of Internet users has increased very rapidly due to the scalability of the network. The users demand for higher bandwidth and better throughput in the case of on demand video, or video conference or any real time distributed network system. Performance is a great issue in any distributed networks. In this paper we have shown the performance of the multicast groups or clusters in the distributed network system. In this paper we have shown the performance of different users or receivers belongs to the multicast group or cluster in the distributed network, transfer data from the source node with multirate multicast or unirate multicast by considering packet level forwarding procedure in different sessions. In this work we have shown that how the throughput was effected when the number of receiver increase. In this work we have considered the different types of queue such as RED, Fair queue at the junction node for maintaining the end to end packet transmission. In this work we have used various congestion control protocol at the sender nodes. This paper we have shown the performance of the distributed cluster network by multirate multicast.

Abstract:
The ionic conductivity of 8, 9 and 10 mol% K+ doped Ag2CdI4 showed slight decrease whereas the phase transition was observed almost at the same temperature as it reported for pure Ag2CdI4. This decrease in conductivity likely results from decrease in free volume because of the larger K+ ions (rK+ = 133 pm and rAg+ = 129 pm) entering Ag2CdI4 lattice which is unchanging in size. The dielectric constant of Ag2CdI4 was found to increase with increasing temperature as the orientation of dipoles is facilitated in rising temperature.

Abstract:
A bacterial strain, designated BzDS03 was isolated from water sample, collected from Dal Lake Srinagar. The strain was characterized by using 16S ribosomal RNA gene and 16S-23S rRNA internal transcribed spacer region sequences. Phylogenetic analysis showed that 16S rRNA sequence of the isolate formed a monophyletic clade with genera Escherichia. The closest phylogenetic relative was Escherichia coli with 99% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity. The result of Ribosomal database project’s classifier tool revealed that the strain BzDS03 belongs to genera Escherichia.16S rRNA sequence of isolate was deposited in GenBank with accession number FJ961336. Further analysis of 16S-23S rRNA sequence of isolate confirms that the identified strain BzDS03 be assigned as the type strain of Escherichia coli with 98% 16S-23S rRNA sequence similarity. The GenBank accession number allotted for 16S-23S rRNA intergenic spacer sequence of isolate is FJ961337.

Abstract:
The study was conducted to evaluate the efficacies of the three long acting beta2-agonists (Salmeterol, Formoterol and Bambuterol) in south Indian population. This prospective multi-centered study conducted in various hospitals on basis of block randomization method using St. George’s respiratory questionnaire and assess pulmonary function using spirometer. Out of 85 patients, 25 received Salmeterol, 35 received Formoterol and 25 received Bambuterol, showed variable improvement in the quality of life from baseline and clinical improvements. Change in overall scores from baseline was 56.33 units for Salmeterol, 61.91 units for Formoterol and 54.54 units for Bambuterol. Pulmonary function tests showed a better result for Salmeterol. Knowledge, attitude and practice of patients were improved at the end of the study and showed better compliance that had a good impact on the quality of life of the patients. Salmeterol has shown a better improvement and correlation in case of both quality of life and pulmonary function tests, when compared with others. Formoterol showed a better quality of life but a correlation with the pulmonary function tests was not seen like Salmeterol. The proportion of patients showed increase in knowledge, attitude and practice as well as the compliance by the end of the study.

Abstract:
Background. Hand hygiene is recognized as the leading measure to prevent cross-transmission of microorganisms. Regarding hospital acquired infections, the compliance of nurses with hand washing guidelines seems to be vital in preventing the disease transmission among patients. There is a paucity of studies exploring this subject in Asia. Especially medical and nursing student’s knowledge of standard hand hygiene precautions is rarely compared. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 98 medical and 46 nursing students in a tertiary medical college in India. Knowledge was assessed using WHO hand hygiene questionnaire. Attitude and practices were evaluated by using another self-structured questionnaire. test was used to compare the percentage of correct responses between medical and nursing students. A value less than 0.05 was considered significant. Results. Only 9% of participants (13 out of 144) had good knowledge regarding hand hygiene. Nursing students knowledge ( ) , attitude ( ), and practices ( ) were significantly better than medical students. 1. Introduction Hand hygiene is recognized as the leading measure to prevent cross-transmission of microorganisms and to reduce the incidence of health care associated infections [1, 2]. Despite the relative simplicity of this procedure, compliance with hand hygiene among health care providers is as low as 40% [3–5]. To address this problem, continuous efforts are being made to identify effective and sustainable strategies. One of such efforts is the introduction of an evidence-based concept of “My five moments for hand hygiene” by World Health Organization. These five moments that call for the use of hand hygiene include the moment before touching a patient, before performing aseptic and clean procedures, after being at risk of exposure to body fluids, after touching a patient, and after touching patient surroundings. This concept has been aptly used to improve understanding, training, monitoring, and reporting hand hygiene among healthcare workers [6]. Nurses constitute the largest percentage of the health care workers (HCW) [7] and they are the “nucleus of the health care system” [8]. Because they spend more time with patients than any other HCWs, their compliance with hand washing guidelines seems to be more vital in preventing the disease transmission among patients. In Asia there is a paucity of studies [7–10] exploring this subject, although the prevalence of health care associated infections is high in this region; especially medical and nursing student’s knowledge of standard